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Friday, 15 November 2013

A Spam Too Far

Where had I got to before – on the
verge of blogging when the only traumas were related to
spel cheques and to utterly useless help pages with labyrinthine links accessed
from blue underlined portals

At that point I had a grand total of one
post and from that point on I was hooked. Hooked like an armchair cricketer with
a shelf full of Wisdens Cricketer’s Almanac at my elbow completely obsessed
with statistics.

I have bored family and café life witless
with constant updates of the number of “views” my blog has had. The studied off-hand
opening gambit of “I’d just like to report that I have had xxx views of my
blog” was initially met with genuine interest, then polite interest, then
polite barely disguised disinterest, and finally with no interest whatsoever,
and latterly I find people have to frantically find the toilet or need to get
to the shops ‘before they close’. Even the animals are growing restless with
this admittedly daily statistical litany.

But then there is the geography! Blogger,
the platform from which this particular post is being “launched” provides
information about where in the world views or hits are happening. To alleviate the glazed looks after
reports on viewing frequency I do manage to elicit genuine responses when I can
say with all honesty. . “and I’ve been read in 51 countries!” “Really?” people
say dabbing their eyes to remove the tears of boredom. “Yes – Bahrain, Belgium, Bolivia, Botswana,
and Brazil” I sing out alliteratively.

So after three months, 20 posts and 2,500
hits and a world of a million readers just waiting to be captured I thought I’d
got it cracked!

But no I hadn’t.

It had taken me hours of effort to get to
this zenith of success. Hours of heartbreak and tantrums, not to say tears. My
newly acquired son-in-law who has proved to be an inexhaustible supply of IT
knowledge is, I am sure, questioning the wisdom of marrying into this family;
because it is he who has been on the receiving end of wailing and teeth
gnashing emails that rail about the vicissitudes of computer-speak. Evening after evening I sat snorting and
snarling at the computer as I engaged with
a whole variety of help pages and forums (for the purist this should
surely be fora and I fully agree –
but the spel chequer won’t allow it and anyway no one else seems to mind). All
this online assistance served only to confuse even further and I tumbled like
Alice down one blue-lined and underlined rabbit hole after another, each
becoming more foetid then the next with over-information, until I slung out
another foul-mouthed and repetitive email distress rocket to the now long
suffering and eternally patient son-in-law.

It was round about this time of high
anxiety and even higher blood pressure that I discovered that I was reading the
word ‘varnish’ on a computer software ‘help’ page, a word that I felt would
have been happier in the context of wooden floors and antique furniture. I was
so confused that I fled to Wikipedia for intellectual support and protection
and was given none. I could not understand the language let alone the
explanation. “Now is the time,” I mused, “to say stuff it and stick to what you
know and stop trying to be clever. Just
carry on writing and don’t worry about trying to increase audience figures.” And
so I did.

Then I discovered a potential measure of
success – an indicator of a blog gone right perhaps. An increasing number of
bizarre spam messages.

Does this curious and irritating phenomenon
happen at a certain threshold of views I wonder? It certainly explains the
unusual number of views that I started getting from Poland, Russia and the
Ukraine because a number of spams have included hyper links to a variety of web
pages with addresses that have no vowels, allude to dodgy pharmaceutical
products, and have the telling “pl” and “ru” suffix in the domain names. I
appear to have become a vehicle for flogging genuine Louis Vuiton Handbags (genuine
- yea right – tell that to Louis), green coffee extract (which sounds faintly
poisonous), something to do with self-tantric massage (the mind boggles – in a
rather exciting sort of a way), and making a modest income in US dollars from
home while being happily encumbered with bumptious toddlers. Other than the
extreme annoyance that these advertising bandits are using my space – my
effort to hawk someone else’s wares, not even their own mind, someone
else’s, I fail to see what possible income there can be derived from posting
clearly devious adverts about obviously faux Hermes and Gucci leather products
on an intensely passionate (so I would like to believe) piece on the decimation
of the world rhino population. No one but a blithering idiot (obviously excluding
handbag salespersons) – or a not particularly subtle piece of software could
make such an ironic mistake . . . but there you have it – nut-shelled and
ship-shaped – there is nothing subtle about this business

What characterises these communications is
that they are mostly empty folksy comments couched in bland terms designed (I
suppose) to fit in with almost any blog posting and supposed to persuade the
reader to open their own innocuous blog
which is entitled “health tips and green coffee beans” (green coffee again!) but actually leads you to an Uzbekistani porno
page - I know because I’ve been there .
. . once. Oh and they are all signed by the same nice chap named “Anonymous.”

I recently had a lovely spam, from my old
mate Anonymous, which read:-

"We're a group of volunteers and opening a new
scheme in our community. Your web site provided us with valuable information to
work on. You have done an impressive job and our whole community will be
grateful to you. Feel free to visit my web site “Arizona outlet malls"

I was so busy feeling pleased and successful that I
almost forget that the posting that Anonymous was referring
to was another piece of whimsy about throwing balls for dogsbut I do hope that it has added value to
their community efforts . . .

So, here I sit after having now been
blogging for a little under 10 months. I’ve posted 43 articles of a variety of
subjects with an admitted bias towards my cat, mountaineering and trekking, and
fat-headed attempts at engagement with the “third world.” The number of hits I
have had far exceeds my initial (admittedly low) expectations, and recently the
daily hit rate has accelerated. However I have received only 29
"real" comments and a massive 780 or so spam comments - all of which
have been filtered out by Blogger - for which I am very grateful! But I wonder
to what extent my hard work is being read by real people as against spamming
machines?

I blog because I enjoy writing. If I do get comments then it is to an extent a
validation of what I have done - which is very nice. I don't think however that
I am writing and posting to elicit comments. Broadly the validation of my
efforts lies, in my mind, in the number of hits that I have achieved - and it
is the uncertainty surrounding those statistics that is exercising my mind.

I don't really mind the hundreds of senseless spam comments that are trying to persuade
me to purchase erectile dysfunction cream but it is the implication in my mind
that "hits" are in fact "bot-hits" and the thought of that
pisses me off!

A last comment from faithful old Anonymous
–

“Outstanding post but I was wanting to know
if you could write a litte more on this topic? I'd be very thankful if you
could elaborate a little bit more. Appreciate it! Have a look at my blog:- Trying to get pregnant.” This on a posting about eating snake
. . .

What the hell - so long as I can entertain
or stimulate real readers the spammers, can as far as I’m concerned all go to
hell in a handbag, a dodgy Louis Vuiton one!

What do you think?

Ivan the Spammer, busy at it in his cellar
in Uzbekistan.With acknowledgement to the late Austin Hleza